WORDS QUOTES VIII

quotations about words

I shall repeat a hundred times; we really ought to free ourselves from the seduction of words!

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Beyond Good and Evil

Tags: Friedrich Nietzsche


Avoid, which many grave men have not done, words taken from sacred subjects and from elevated poetry: these we have seen vilely prostituted. Avoid too the society of the barbarians who misemploy them.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

"Barrow and Newton", Dialogues of Literary Men

Tags: Walter Savage Landor


As long as words a different sense will bear,
And each may be his own interpreter,
Our airy faith will no foundation find;
The word's a weathercock for every wind.

JOHN DRYDEN

The Hind and the Panther

Tags: John Dryden


Words are in this respect like water, that they often take their taste, flavour, and character, from the mouth out of which they proceed, as the water from the channel through which it flows.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon

Tags: Charles Caleb Colton


With words, we can negotiate deals. With words, we can enter into the covenant of marriage. With words, we can declare war. Words reveal our intent and purpose.

RON WOOD

"Words are weapons", Meridian Star, January 23, 2016


Theirs, too, is the word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

"Notes on an Elizabethan Play", The Common Reader


The words that bore the deathless verse of Homer from bard to a group of fascinated hearers, and with whose fading sounds the poems passed beyond recall, are fixed on the printed page in a hundred tongues. They carry to a million eyes what once could reach but a hundred ears.

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER

lecture at Columbia University, March 4, 1908

Tags: Nicholas Murray Butler


Sometimes you want to say things, and you're missing an idea to make them with, and missing a word to make the idea with. In the beginning was the word. That's how somebody tried to explain it once. Until something is named, it doesn't exist.

SAMUEL R. DELANY

Babel-17

Tags: Samuel R. Delany


My method is to find a word with a gesture.

CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN

An Evolution in Aphorisms

Tags: Christian Morgenstern


In our world, words seem to flow in endless disharmony. Words are often misused in ways that do an injustice to truth. We are exposed to endless words in print, social media and everyday speaking that do not build a framework of goodness, honesty and truth. We experience words that alarm, serve people's own selfish needs, are untruthful, controlling, or seek to appeal in ways that do not speak the truth in love. When the power of self-interest replaces truth, we are headed in the direction of chaos.

LARRY ROREM

"Choosing our words truthfully", Juneau Empire, March 26, 2017


Contrary to what some people have tried to imply, the meaning of a word can be, to a great extent, a subjective experience. After all, words are really just ideas. Those ideas are layered in experiences unique to each individual's perspective. That means that we may not be using our terms in the same exact manner as we might think others are. If that isn't bad enough, those unique ideas might, or might not be rooted in fact. These things should force us to reflect on the thought that perhaps even the few words we do use are not as well defined or universal as some would have us believe.

DAVID BUCIENSKI

"How much do words really matter?", Southgate News Herald, March 9, 2017


Words come reluctantly to me, they clatter in my mouth and tumble out heavily like stones.

J. M. COETZEE

In the Heart of the Country

Tags: J. M. Coetzee


Words are the light and sound of our existence, the heat lightning by which the night is illuminated.

DAN SIMMONS

The Rise of Endymion


Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?

JAMES JOYCE

"The Dead", Dubliners

Tags: James Joyce


Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

Philosophical Investigations

Tags: Ludwig Wittgenstein


The pressed oil of words can blaze up into music, into image, into the heart and mind's knowledge. The lit and shadowed places within us can be warmed.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry

Tags: Jane Hirshfield


Our words are, as a general rule, filled by the people to whom we address them with a meaning which those people derive from their own substance, a meaning widely different from that which we had put into the same words when we uttered them.

MARCEL PROUST

Within a Budding Grove

Tags: Marcel Proust


I write because words are beautiful when used correctly to describe thoughts and feelings. I write because when a topic or thought is important, the words just pour right onto the page as if that is where they were supposed to be.

SAM WAKITSCH

"I write because to me, words are beautiful", Chicago Now, January 25, 2016


I hated the words. Each one was like a big live insect in my mouth.

GLEN DUNCAN

Talulla Rising

Tags: Glen Duncan


How charming it is that there are words and sounds: are not words and sounds rainbows and illusive bridges between things eternally separated?

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Tags: Friedrich Nietzsche